THE TEXT In the summer semester of 1925 in Freiburg, Edmund Husserl delivered a lecture course on phenomenological psychology, in 1926127 a course on the possibility of an intentional psychology, and in 1928 a course entitled "Intentional Psychology. " In preparing the critical edition of Phiinomeno logische Psychologie (Husserliana IX), I Walter Biemel presented the entire 1925 course as the main text and included as supplements significant excerpts from the two subsequent courses along with pertinent selections (...) from various research manuscripts of Husserl. He also included as larger supplementary texts the final version and two of the three earlier drafts of Husserl's Encyclopedia Britannica article, "Phenomenology"2 (with critical comments and a proposed formulation of the Introduction and Part I of the second draft by Martin Heidegger3), and the text of Husserl's Amsterdam lecture, "Phenomenological Psychology," which was a further revision of the Britannica article. Only the main text of the 1925 lecture course (Husserliana IX, 1-234) is translated here. In preparing the German text for publication, Walter Biemel took as his basis Husserl's original lecture notes (handwritten in shorthand and I Hague: Nijhoff, 1962, 1968. The second impression, 1968, corrects a number of printing mistakes which occur in the 1962 impression. 2 English translation by Richard E. Palmer in Journal o{ the British Society {or Phenomenology, II (1971), 77-90. 3 Heidegger's part of the second draft is available in English as Martin Heidegger, "The Idea of Phenomenology," tr. John N. Deely and Joseph A. (shrink)

Phenomenological Psychology Phenomenological psychology is the use of the phenomenological method to gain insights regarding topics related to psychology. Though researchers and thinkers throughout the history of philosophy have identified their work as contributing to phenomenological psychology, how people understand phenomenological psychology is a matter of some controversy. On the one hand, in light of … Continue reading Phenomenological Psychology →.

Husserl's Original View on Phenomenological Psychology* JOSEPH J.KOCKELMANS Some forty years ago Edmund Husserl spoke publicly for the first time of a ...

Studies on learning have tended to endorse the importance of knowledge rather than the significance of the cultural contexts embedded in the different histories and biographies of learners. In order to investigate the relationship between these contexts and students' conceptions of learning, this study focuses on South African distance students' accounts of their personal experience and understanding of learning, using Giorgi's phenomenological psychology method to explore the learners' histories and aspirations as they construct and negotiate the meaning they (...) attach to learning. The findings indicate that the social environment, the culture, the political milieu and economic conditions are the most important determinants of conceptions of learning, with all these multiple contexts interacting to influence students' beliefs about learning, which in turn affect their approach to learning and hence their learning outcomes. It is thus argued that, in order to facilitate distance learning, the lifeworld of the learner needs to be both understood and brought to bear on the educational process. (shrink)

The phenomenology-psychology dialogue has been taking place for over 100 years now and it is still not clear how the two disciplines relate to each other. Part of the problem is that both disciplines have developed complexly with competing, not easily integratable perspectives. In this article the Husserlian phenomenological perspective is adopted and Husserl’s understanding of how phenomenology can help psychology is clarified. Then the usage of phenomenology within the historical scientific tradition of psychology is examined (...) to see the senses of phenomenology that were employed in that tradition. The German literature of psychology between the founding of the discipline and the beginning of the Nazi regime indicates quite clearly that the phenomenological perspective was part of the mainstream psychology of that era. The article ends by listing four difficult challenges that have to be met if a viable psychology based upon Husserlian phenomenology is to be possible. (shrink)

Convergences between phenomenological psychology (PP) and behaviorism include opposition to dualism between the physical world and mental representations, and between a real visible man and an "inner" man with conscious states of which he alone is aware. Additionally, both views favor cautious use of theories, especially those which utilize hypothetico-deductive methodology, and a careful, descriptive, rather than inferential approach to behavior. Behaviorism and PP also share opposition to physiological reductionism. The 2 viewpoints diverge regarding their understanding of science. (...) PP is more sensitive to the difference between natural and human phenomena and contends that the latter cannot be adequately dealt with by means of the scientific approach applicable with the former. Rather, a broader and more naively descriptive approach must be adopted. A further difference is that PP accepts intentionality in man's viewpoint of the world while behaviorism accounts for man strictly in terms of external relations. Finally, the phenomenologist is more likely to eschew the language of control in describing man and, instead, emphasize a careful description of the meanings man imposes on his world. (shrink)

This article contains first translations of articles by merleau-ponty, jacques lacan and j b pontalis, as well as original articles by other merleau-ponty scholars on such topics as psychoanalysis, phenomenological psychology, intersubjectivity, and sexuality. also incudes a complete bibliography of merleau-ponty's works available in english.

The book moves from descriptive through to more interpretative phenomenological methods to enable the reader to learn to use the main approaches to ...

This article presents the tradition of phenomenologically founded psychological research that was originally initiated by Amedeo Giorgi. This data analysis method is inseparable from the broader project of establishing an autonomous phenomenologically based human scientific psychology. After recounting the history of the method from the 1960’s to the present, we explain the rationale for why we view data collection as a process that should be adaptable to the unique mode of appearance of each particular phenomenon being researched. The substance (...) of the article is then devoted to a detailed outline of the method’s whole-part-whole procedure of data analysis. We then offer a sample analysis of a brief description of an ordinary daydream. This is an anxiety daydream in response to the recent Covid-19 pandemic. We present this daydream analysis in full to show the concrete hands-on 5 step process through which the researcher explicated the participants’ expressions from the particular to the general. From this brief sample analysis, the researcher offers a first-person reflection on the data analysis process to offer the reader an introduction to the diacritical nature of phenomenological psychological elucidation. (shrink)

Phenomenological psychology is shown as a means to examine implications of mass-commodity culture, through the presentation of a phenomenological analysis of a TV commercial. This advertisement plays upon the vicissitudes of fathers' experiences of their relationships with their pre-pubescent daughters. The findings disclose an image of a father's ambivalently lived inability to tolerate his daughter's first sexual attraction to another male, and his attempt to continue to control the satisfaction of his daughter's bodily desire through commodities. The (...) significance of and alternatives to this variation are suggested. (shrink)

Originally published in 1975 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, this volume introduces phenomenological psychology and is intended for the beginning student as well as for professionals in the field. It includes the historical status of the major concepts mentioned, a brief summary of the major philosophical contributions of phenomenology, and numerous references for further investigation.

J.H. van den Berg was a member of the Utrecht school of phenomenology that flourished in Holland during the 1950s and early 1960s. He was a psychiatrist who had a private practice and he taught at the University of Leiden. Along with other members of the Utrecht school, not all of whom were psychiatrists, he was among the first to apply the insights drawn from existential-phenomenological philosophy to psychology and psychiatry. As with the philosophers, he emphasized that subjectivity (...) was engaged with the world and its activities had to be described. He emphasized that insights into experience as lived, or the phenomenal level, was what was critical for psychologists to understand. (shrink)

Part of teaching the descriptive phenomenological psychological method is to assist students in grasping their previously unrecognized assumptions regarding the meaning of “science.” This paper is intended to address a variety of assumptions that are encountered when introducing students to the descriptive phenomenological psychological method pioneered by Giorgi. These assumptions are: 1) That the meaning of “science” is exhausted by empirical science, and therefore qualitative research, even if termed “human science,” is more akin to literature or art than (...) methodical, scientific inquiry; 2) That as a primarily aesthetic, poetic enterprise human scientific psychology need not attempt to achieve a degree of rigor and epistemological clarity analogous to that pursued by natural scientists; 3) That “objectivity” is a concept belonging to natural science, and therefore human science ought not to strive for objectivity because this would require “objectivizing” the human being; 4) That qualitative research must always adopt an “interpretive” approach, description being seen as merely a mode of interpretation. These assumptions are responded to from a perspective drawing primarily upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, but also upon Eagleton’s analysis of aestheticism. (shrink)

Scientific points of view, according to which my existence is a moment of the world's, are always both naive and at the same time dishonest, because they take for granted, without explicitly mentioning it, the other point of view, namely that of consciousness, through which from the outset a world forms itself round me and begins to exist for me.

The author explains that his background was in experimental psychology but that he wanted to study the whole person and not fragmented psychological processes. He also desired a non-reductionistic method for studying humans. Fortunately he came across the work of Edmund Husserl and discovered in the latter’s thought a way of researching humans that met the criteria he was seeking. Eventually he developed a phenomenological method for researching humans in a psychological way based upon the work of Husserl (...) and Merleau-Ponty. This article briefly describes the method. (shrink)

Praise for First Edition: `This book is highly recommended to a wide range of people as a clear and systematic introduction to phenomenological psychology... the book has set the stage for possible new colloquia between the phenomenological and other approaches in psychology' - Changes `As a trainee interested in matters existential, I have been put off in the past by the long-winded and confusing texts usually available in academic libraries. Thankfully, here is a text that remedies (...) that situation... [it] provides a readable and insightful account' - Clinical Psychology Forum 'Spinelli’s classic introduction to phenomenology should be essential reading on all person-centred, existential and humanistic trainings, and any other counselling or psychotherapy course which aims to help students develop an in-depth understanding of human lived-experience. This book is sure to remain a key text for many years to come' - Mick Cooper, Senior Lecturer in Counselling, University of Strathclyde 'This is by far the most monumental, erudite, comprehensive, authoritative case that Existentialism and Phenomenology (a) have a rightful place in the academy; (b) are tough-minded bodies of thought; (c) have rigorous scientific foundations; (d) bequeath a distinctive school of psychotherapy and counselling; and (e) are just as good as the more established systems of psychology' - Alvin R. Mahrer, Ph.D. University of Ottawa, Canada, Author of The Complete Guide To Experiential Psychotherapy 'This book’s rich insight into the lacunae of modern psychological thinking illustrates the contribution that existential phenomenology can make to founding a coherently mature Psychology that is both fully human(e) and responsibly ‘scientific’ in the best sense of that term' - Richard House, Ph.D., Magdalen Medical Practice, Norwich; Steiner Waldorf teacher. The Interpreted World, Second Edition, is a welcome introduction to phenomenological psychology, an area of psychology which has its roots in notoriously difficult philosophical literature. Writing in a highly accessible, jargon-free style, Ernesto Spinelli traces the philosophical origins of phenomenological theory and presents phenomenological perspectives on central topics in psychology - perception, social cognition and the self. He compares the phenomenological approach with other major contemporary psychological approaches, pointing up areas of divergence and convergence with these systems. He also examines implications of phenomenology for the precepts and process of psychotherapy. For the Second Edition, a new chapter on phenomenological research has been added in which the author focuses on the contribution of phenomenology in relation to contemporary scientific enquiry. He describes the methodology used in phenomenological research and illustrates the approach through an actual research study. The Interpreted World, Second Edition demystifies an exciting branch of psychology, making its insights available to all students of psychology, psychotherapy and counselling. (shrink)

A systematic working out of the basic concepts of phenomenological psychology through an interdisciplinary synthesis of gestalt psychology and existential phenomenological thought.

Sartre was strongly attracted by what he had heard about German phenomenology. Raymond Aron was spending a year at the French Institute in Berlin and studying Husserl simultaneously with preparing a historical thesis. When he came to Paris he spoke of Husserl to Sartre. We spent an evening together at the Bec de Gaz in the Rue Montparnasse. We ordered the speciality of the house, apricot cocktails; Aron said, pointing to his glass: "You see, my dear fellow, if you are (...) a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!" Sartre turned pale with emotion at this. Here was just the thing he had been longing to achieve for years-to describe objects just as he saw and touched them, and extract philosophy from the process. (Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, p. 112). (shrink)

Experiences with art have been of longstanding concern for phenomenologists, yet the psychological question of the appearing of art appreciation has not been addressed. This article attends to this lack, exemplifying the merits of a phenomenological psychological investigation based on three semi-structured interviews conducted with museum visitors. The interviews were subjected to meaning condensation as well as to descriptions of the first aesthetic reception, the retrospective interpretation, and the “horizons of expectations” included in the meeting with art. The findings (...) show that art appreciation appears as variations in experiential forms comprised of gratifying experiences of beauty, challenges to the understanding, and bodily-informed alterations of the emotions. The phenomenological psychology of actual, lived experience can embrace the phenomenological theories of art appreciation by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, yet highlight the psychological importance of experiences with art. (shrink)

This is a unique study, contuining the work of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, and using the techniques of phenomenology against the prevailing nihilism of our culture. It expands our understanding of the human potential for spiritual self-realization by interpreting it as the developing of a bodily-felt awareness informing our gestures and movements. The author argues that a psychological focus on our experience of well-being and pathology as embodied beings contributes significantly to a historically relevant critique of ideology. It also provides an (...) essential touchstone in experience for a fruitful individual and collective response to the danger of nihilism. Dr Levin draws on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to clarify Heidegger's analytic of human beings through an interpretation that focuses on our experience of being embodied. He reconstructs in modern terms the wisdom implicit in western and semitic forms of religion and philosophy, considering the work of Freud, Jung, Focault and Neitzsche, as well as that of American educational philosophers, including Dewey. In particular, he draws on the psychology of Freud and Jung to clarify our historical experience of gesture and movement and to bring to light its potential in the fulfilment of Selfhood. Throughout the book, the pathologies of the ego and its journey into Selfhood are considered in relation to the conditons of technology and the powers of nihilism. (shrink)

This article on the early history of phenomenological psychological research in the academic context in America focuses on the four approaches of the following respective psychologists: 1) Donald Snygg, Arthur W. Combs, and Anne C. Richards and Fred Richards; 2) Robert B. MacLeod; 3) Adrian L. van Kaam; and 4) Amedeo P. Giorgi. It begins by first addressing the "context" for this early history namely, the European origin of philosophical phenomenology and the connection of it with the psychology (...) of its times in Europe, and then the American background for the development of a sensibility for phenomenology and an eventual connection of phenomenology with psychology. Each of the four positions was examined in terms of basic approach to the study of human experience and behavior. That is, examination was directed toward whether the respective position was under the aegis of psychology as a human science or as a natural science. Also examined were the research postures and the methodologies of the four positions in terms of their respective degrees of reflecting either the human science or the natural science approach, and in terms of their approximation to a phenomenological psychology. It was found that syncretism characterized the approaches of the first three positions, and that there was either an absence of phenomenological psychological method in the psychologies of those positions or, in the case of MacLeod, an undeveloped and non-worked-out method. Only the work of Amedeo Giorgi presented 1) a human science approach that was radical and not compromised by natural science syncretions, and 2) an articulated phenomenological psychological method based on Husserl's concept of intentionality and on mediation of Merleau-Ponty's philosophical phenomenological method. (shrink)

The essay reviews how phenomenological psychology can draw on Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenology in order to clarify the foundations of the cultural sciences and then explicates the theory of this psychology implicit in Schutz's oeuvre. Max Weber has shown that all phenomena of the socio-cultural world originate in social interaction and can be referred to it. According to him, it is the central task of sociology to understand the meaning which the actor bestows on his action. But (...) what is action, what is meaning, and how is the understanding of such meaning by a fellow-man possible, be he a partner of the social interaction, or merely an observer in everyday life, or a social scientist? I submit that any attempt to answer these questions leads immediately to questions with which Husserl was concerned and which he has to a certain extent solved. (shrink)

The last in a series of examinations, this paper articulates Husserl's mature position on the nature of a phenomenologically informed human science. Falling between the naïve positivity of a naturalistic approach to psychology and the transcendental view of consciousness at the base of phenomenological philosophy, we argue that a human scientific psychology—while not itself transcendental in nature needs to re-arise upon the transcendental ground as an empirical—but no longer transcendentally naïve—discipline through Husserl's notion of the "return to (...) positivity." This notion of the return allows us to avoid "transcendental psychologism," differentiating psychological from transcendental subjectivity but from a transcendental, rather than naïve perspective. In this way, the return to positivity reclaims psychology as a worldly, but no longer naïve, discipline. To facilitate an understanding of the different perspectives in question, and the process of leaving the naturalistic perspective in order to return to it once armed with a transcendental understanding and its associated tools, we continue to develop the illustrative example of anorexia provided in the first part of this series. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of this framework for transcendental reforms both of clinical practice and of psychological research. (shrink)

Phenomenology, currently the most active philosophical movement on the European scene, has shown persistent concern for psychological problems and principles, and for the science of psychology in general. This concern has taken the form of various attempts to amend psychology according to phenomenological precepts and methods with the intent of providing it with a new metaphysical basis. Recent examples of this trend are the textbook of Snygg and Combs and the two books published in France by the (...) philosopher, Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

Expands our understanding of the human potential of spiritual self-realization by interpreting it as the developing of a bodily-felt awareness informing our ...

In Ideen II Edmund Husserl delineates the three spheres which constitute the reality which human being is and this way introduces us to a different anthropologywhich is fruit of his phenomenological analysis. The tri-partite analysis of the human subjectivity, in Ideen II provides us with an anthropology which is a sound foundation for a new psychology (phenomenological psychology) where the analyses of the lived-experiences is an instrument to understand the psychic acts. Husserl after having known the (...) psychology, a science of the subjectivity and which is interrelated with the corporeality, proposes a psychology which is in connection with the nature and only in this connection it can be realized fully. In this way the concept of purely phenomenological psychology serves also to clarify what the fundamentally transcendental science i.e. transcendental phenomenology is. The phenomenologicaly transcendental psychology developed by Husserl is completely a new science of consciousness in respect to all the other historical forms of psychology and other sciences which study consciousness. As phenomenological psychology moves in its natural attitude towards the world (Welteinstellung), it has access to all the positive sciences and in this way it can be called science of all sciences. (shrink)

This essay strives to bring together the institutional history of phenomenological psychology within the American academy from the middle of the 20th century to the current moment. Although phenomenological psychology has always been a dynamically international and interdisciplinary movement, the scope of this essay is limited to the different ways in which this new field expressed itself in certain psychology departments and educational institutions across the United States. After presenting this institutional history, and some individual (...) contributors, a brief commentary is offered. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to argue that what Schutz enterprises can be integrated into what Husserl calls phenomenological psychology. My interpretation is based on Schutz’s own remarks, which are though more or less dismissed by most of the interpreters of Schutz. Beginning with an articulation of the social theory of Schutz, I explore the meaning of phenomenological psychology in Husserl as next in order to point out that despite the disagreement with Husserl’s transcendental approach to (...) intersubjectivity Schutz has a closer adherence to Husserl than commonly held. (shrink)